Anyone else playing the beta? If you weren't lucky enough to get a free key (I wasn't), you can get one now by pre-ordering from either gamestop or Amazon.

Still waiting to see if Blizzard will be able to pull off the amazing 3 race equilibrium which made the original Starcraft such a success. There are plenty of new units (and strategies) to play around with. I'm having a really good time with it so far.

They've already made a good number of balance changes and most likely will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the beta. As it stands now:

Terran seem to be the most powerful at the moment (or at least the easiest race to cheese with). They also seem to have the best spread of new units granting them a slight leg up as far as adaptability goes. I don't know if this was an intentional decision in their design, or if its simply a case of unintentionally giving them too much love since this is technically their expansion.

Zerg have become extremely adept in sneak attacks and, as always, massing large amounts of units/rapid expansion. I've also noticed in the 2v2 and 1v1 games that are available in the beta, Zerg players almost never turn out heavy tech units (ultralisk, brood lord). I don't know if it's just because it takes too much time and resources to get there in a short game, or if its because old strategies die hard and everyone who plays zerg fall into the same patterns.

Protoss have a number of units who are good for harassment, but their a tad tougher to play than the other 2 races since their units are so much more expensive and "durable." Carriers still seem to be their end game of choice, and are actually viable to tech up to in a 2v2 game. They also have this really nifty air unit which does increased damage the longer it attacks a single target, great for hit and runs, and somewhere between this game and the last game they must have seen War of the worlds since their new mechanical walker seems to be a blatant rip off.

Alot of players do still resort to rushing shitty tier one units, however in the platinum leagues I've also seen alot of really creative strategies involving special units and abilities. Most of the time tier 1 rushes are easily countered through a little bit of creative micromanagement or "rock paper scissors" style counters. Games that last longer than 10 minutes tend to get pretty interesting.

Plus the new league play makes it easy to get matched up with other players of your skill level. Though it seems that in any league but the platinums, players get caught up doing the same cheese tactics over and over again, rush this mass that. Anyway, its good fun, if anyone is playing my battle.net ID is TheDoc.awesome.

As I understand it, they are going to break the game up into three packages at $50+ a piece. Makes me glad I'm not terribly interested in RTS games, seeing as how they haven't seem to evolved much, at their core, since 1990's Dune II. :/
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"Mental note: Port quote file to netbook. ^_^" - Thothie's Brain
Thothie

They are breaking it into 3 peices, though I'd be surprised if each was priced at 50$. The first is, but I'd assume the subsequent installments will carry the same weight as an expansion pack in both content and price; so probably around 30-40$ each spaced at least a year apart knowing blizzard. Yes, its 110-130$ in total, but considering i spent nearly 100$ on rockband alone and got far less use out of it; I'm willing to make the investment.

In fact, I've already purchased 2 copies of SCII collectors edition, which I plan on flipping at double the MSRP as it nears release date. That should more than cover the cost of all three of the games. Never underestimate the value of digital property in short supply. I just hope i'm not overestimating it.

Been playing it for about a month now.

every patch that has come out has made certain units stronger / weaker.

Currently this is how it feels for me.

Terran > Zerg

Protoss > Terran

Zerg > Protoss


I'm sure the goal is to have Terran = Protoss = Zerg but the results above are how i feel the races are 2 -10min into the game. As matter of fact, all races have to power to end the game in less then 5min. Like Doc said,

Terran = reaper rush (1 reaper can end the game. takes about 2min to make them. doesn't need to worry about choke because they can jump, thus bypassing the choke, run straight to the enemy workers. )

Zerg = classic 6pool ling rush ( takes about 2min to make 6 lings. effective on protoss or zerg who have difficulty making a solid choke in time. )

Protoss = proxy zealot rush (make gateway in enemy base blind spot. you can have 2 zealots comeout and have one kill workers while the other one is stopping their attack units. Protoss has something called chrono boost which allows them to pump out units faster. we all know how powerful 1 zealot can be.)

Of course each race at the same time do have ways to stop these so called 'cheezy tactics' But it cripples your build order. SooOoOooo you need to go scout with one of your workers ASAP to find out what the enemy is planning to do very early into the game because like i said, the game can end in 5min.

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Currently in platinum on my 2v2 with a few friends but, what sucks is that we purposely lost all 5 placement matches to get into the copper league so that we can play sucky players. The reason we did this is because the more wins you get the better avatars we get. and if you get into platinum right after the placement match, my gawd it's tough to win. The majority of my platinum games start with one of our teammates totally demolished and it becomes a 1v1 after 10min since both sides lost their partner. You can share resources and control your partners units so it really becomes a game of teamwork.

Meh I play protoss pretty exclusively and I seem to have more trouble with terran than Zerg.

Queen takes alot longer to build than a reactor, and until that queen goes up, marines can easily outproduce zerg early game. Also, within 2 minutes, toss can have at least 3 photon cannons up which can easily ward off a group of lings.

I think the most overpowered strat in the game is the reaper proxy rush. There's just no real counter for it. Terran don't even have to build any extra SCVs to pull it off. And static defense is pretty much useless since as you said, they can bypass chokepoints.

I think they'll probably have to make tech labs/reapers more expensive or increase their build time or something.

I usually have a queen out after 10 drones 14 lings. at the same rate, terran can only pump out 4 marines, maybe 5 marines at that time. (assuming they did a 8 scv 2 barrack push. which is one of the fastest ways to pump out marines) (3min) Terran does have the potential to build alot of barracks with reactors but, their mineral will not keep up with it until 7,8 min into the game. So that being said. 90% of Terrans will always create a choke. So, if that is the case, many zerg users change their build order by skipping lings and going straight roaches or even buidling another hatchery after 10 drones.

Protoss seems to be the only one that needs to worry about reapers. But if you knew they would go reapers early in the game, you should have 1 zealot and 1 stalker before they bring their first reaper.

As for Protoss cannons. If you do make 3 cannons to stop a ling rush, you're spending 450 minerals. (most likely dont even have a gateway) The 6 ling rush only cost 150 minerals so, any decent player will take advantage of that and produce more drones with no worries of an attack from you. All this strat talk comes down to knowing what your opponent is planning on doing.

However the Void ray attack protoss does on Terran.. my gawd, I really don't think there's way to stop this. I can't seem to find a Terran build that can counter this attack on time..

I've actually been doing much better against terran lately in the last few games I've played. I find most of the terrans in my league cheesewall and don't send out an early rush, and then just mass MMM, which is easily countered by stalkers/sentry/colossus.

I go for an early 12 probe expansion, so I generally have a large surplus of minerals. What I've found is the photon cannons really act more as an intimidation tactic to stop rushes as, most people see photon cannons and assume I have walled in, and tend to go straight for air or heavy tech.

I usually have 6 gateways up and running by 5 minutes and do a quick pylon drop on their mineral fields. Meanwhile, since I have such a surplus of minerals I build up to 8-10 gateways and just start pumping out stalkers (and the occasional sentry) like there's no tomorrow to recover from my initial hit on their economy. Sometimes if I've waited too long to do the pylon drop, I'll mass a large army to hit them in the front while I pylon drop on their minerals, and that tends to work pretty well and cripples at least one opponent.

The strategy is vulnerable to rushing, but with the amount of money I pump into economy early on, I generally have the strongest mid-game economy in the game and just pump out buttloads of stalkers and the occasional colossi if they've gone MMM.

I'm only in the silver league atm but the tactic seems to work 3/4 games in 2v2s. It probably wouldn't hold salt in a 1v1 or in the gold/platinum leagues, but it seems to be an excellent counter to heavy tech.

all in all seems like a worthy successor?

I likely as not will buy it, but not for MP.

Add me

Locane.valgore



Also:

OMG OMGOMGOMG VRs ARE OP OMG

not against stalkers, pheonix (especially now), mutalisks, hydralisks, or vikings, or stimpacked marines they're not.

Takes them quite a few seconds to ramp up their damage, so anything in mass really destroyes voidrays quite effectively... especially zerg mass. I only go void rays if i know the enemy is massing ground melee and no air, then they're ridiculous; but in such a scenario, what air isn't?

You want to talk about OP, mass stalkers ftw. I don't really think there exists a counter that can beat mass stalkers other than... stop them from getting mass stalkers. Maybe mass mutalisk? But even then I have my doubts if you throw in a sentry or 2.

Man, whoever you've been playing with Void Rays hasn't been using them right.

I've been able to slaughter them en masse with hydralisks before, but that was because the toss player was stupid. If you select your group of VRs and then single target down the line of enemies, you'll slaughter them.

I've also lost 5 or 6 VRs to a larger force of ground units before. It seems like there's a tipping point somewhere - probably around 10 or 12 that make them totally unstoppable. They just beam anything to death in less than a second. They're definitely glass cannons, but that only matters if your opponent can live long enough to hit you.

I play toss pretty exclusively man. Void rays are only OP once they've charged up to full damage. If you get into a battle from a cold start vs mass hydras/stalkers you will lose your void rays. Stalkers are also a hell of alot cheaper than void rays, and build instantly, so they're much easier to mass. Hydras too can build 7 at a time and so are also much easier to mass. Also sentries negate 2 ranged damage, which is pretty significant when you figure void rays start out dealing only 5 damage. From a cold start, mass ground wins every time against void rays, and replenishes itself much faster.


Void rays do become extremely powerful once they've charged up to full, yes. A pack of 8+ fully charged voidrays is unstoppable, however I'd argue that if whoever you're playing allows you to get to that point, they deserve to lose.

Not sure if just no one is playing the game anymore or what, but I just made rank 25 diamond lawls.

how is that on the grand scheme of things rank wise?

any harrowing tales of your exploits you wish to share?